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Repeated policy failures suggest that the system created by the European treaties is more suitable to the promotion of negative integration than to the development of measures of positive integration. Positive integration is often identified with positive values like social protection and the correction of market failures, negative integration with deregulation, social dumping, and the protection of economic interests. In fact, economic and other special interests may find it convenient to support measures of positive integration, while fundamental rights are often better protected by negative integration. At any rate, in an increasingly diverse EU it may be necessary to revert to a negative-integration regime, under which most regulatory responsibilities would be left with the people who are directly affected by a given problem, and who have to bear the costs of its solution.